Hacker Group of Romanian, Bulgarian and American Cybercriminals Arrested

The busted hacker group has worked on money laundering and a million dollars worth fraud scheme of US citizens.

US authorities' official statement said that they have issued an indictment against 20 people who were engaged in organized cybercrime. The United States has already demanded the extradition of some of them after they were arrested during a large-scale police raid in Romania.

The arrested criminals were accused of being part of an illegal online auctions scheme that deceived many Americans of millions of dollars.

Hacker fraud involved advertising of non-existent cars and other expensive items on Craigslist and eBay and cheating their victims pay for the purchase. The US Department of Justice also said that hackers often used stolen identities and after fraud, they have made illegal gains via cryptocurrency.

In addition to this indictment, another one was issued in which one of the defendants, Adrian Mitan, was charged with phishing for customers’ credit and debit card information, hacking US companies, and brute-force attacks on POS systems to steal more bank data. The Romanian Adrian Mitan is 24-years-old, he has ordered his American accomplices to create credit and debit card accounts with the stolen data, which were in turn used to dump money from their victims' accounts. The indictment also stated that Mitan has been receiving bitcoins for his involvement in this cybercrime scheme.

The current indictment against hackers was the result of a four-year investigation by the US authorities that has been successfully completed with the assistance of the Romanian police.

Fifteen of the cybercriminals are Romanians, one is a Bulgarian, and the other four are from California, Georgia, and Massachusetts. The hacker group was based in the town of Alexandria, southern Romania, less than 50 km from the Bulgarian border.

Indeed, the hacker group has also used a sophisticated social engineering scheme. Some of the cybercriminals have sent to victims emails posing as eBay staff and military personnel. The 33-year-old Liviu-Sorin Nedelc has been able to deceive the victims to send him money for a bargain purchase of a car. In fraudulent emails, Nedelc sent to the victims invoices that looked completely like authentic ones.

According to official information from the US Department of Justice, 12 foreign nationals of the hacker group have already been extradited to the United States and are awaiting their trials, but details of the Bulgarian were not mentioned at all.